Musk's legal threats are 'massive headache and headwind for Apple,' Dan Ives says
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The Hill
24 minutes ago
- The Hill
China may have more engineers, but it still lacks a culture of innovation
China announced last month a $100 billion push into artificial intelligence, intensifying what is already a fierce race for global tech dominance. Policymakers in Washington are watching with concern, and rightly so. China graduates more than 1.38 million engineers each year, about seven times more than does the U.S. The numbers sound alarming and suggest we're falling behind. But that's not the full story. While engineering degrees are critical, they don't guarantee technological leadership. What really drives innovation is not how many people you train, but how you train them. And here, China faces a deeper, cultural problem that raw output can't solve. The Chinese education system is highly structured and built for scale. But it's also rigid, top-down and deeply rooted in deference to authority. In most classrooms, memorization takes precedence over questioning and the teacher's word is rarely challenged. Correcting a professor's mistake could cause them to 'lose face,' a cultural breach that most students won't risk. This environment produces excellent test-takers but not risk-takers. It produces technical workers who are strong on facts but weak on critical thinking. They can follow a formula, but they struggle to break new ground. This is a key reason China, despite its massive engineering workforce, has yet to deliver the kind of world-changing breakthroughs we've seen from the U.S., from the microprocessor to the iPhone to mRNA vaccines. These innovations didn't come from rote learning. They came from interdisciplinary research, unorthodox thinking and cultures that reward questioning everything. Even when it comes to research output, China's surge in published papers masks a more complex reality. While China now leads the world in scientific publishing volume, scholars like Ming Xia have pointed out that much of this work lacks the originality, rigor and theoretical depth typical of Western scholarship. Plagiarism and fabrication remain persistent problems, even at top institutions. At Tsinghua University, one professor felt compelled to reassure students that if they wrote something publishable, he wouldn't steal it and submit it under his own name. The root issue is systemic. Many Chinese academics were trained in the same system they now uphold, one that prizes metrics and obedience over ideas and inquiry. As a result, scholarship often becomes descriptive, not theoretical. It explains what exists but rarely asks why it matters or how to build something new from it. Contrast that with American higher education. Our universities aren't perfect — they can be chaotic, expensive and uneven, but they're designed to cultivate thinkers, not just technicians. Students are encouraged to disagree with their professors, to explore across disciplines and to challenge the conventional wisdom. The freedom to question isn't a side effect of our system. It's the whole point. Yes, China has closed gaps in recent years by acquiring Western technology through joint ventures, forced transfers and even cyber espionage. But copying isn't creating. Without a culture that fosters original thought, China may scale existing tech but it won't lead the next wave of innovation. That doesn't mean the U.S. can relax. We need to double down on what works, investing in universities, supporting fundamental research and attracting the best minds from around the world. At the same time, we must protect critical technologies and intellectual property from exploitation. Still, we should remember what gives America an edge: a culture that values curiosity, dissent and the freedom to think differently. That's the foundation of every breakthrough we've ever made. In the long run, engineering dominance isn't just about how many degrees a country prints. It's about whether those engineers are trained to challenge the status quo and imagine something better. If the U.S. keeps leaning into its strengths of diversity, openness and academic freedom, we won't just keep pace with China. We will continue to lead.
Fast Company
24 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Musk to sue Apple for featuring OpenAI over X, Grok in the App Store's top apps
Billionaire SpaceX, Tesla and X owner Elon Musk says he plans to sue Apple for not featuring X and its Grok artificial intelligence chatbot app in its top recommended apps in its App Store. Musk posted the comments on X late Monday, saying, 'Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your 'Must Have' section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.' Grok is owned by Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI. Musk went on to say that 'Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action.' He gave no further details. There was no immediate comment from Apple, which has faced various allegations of antitrust violations in recent years. A federal judge recently found that Apple violated a court injunction in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games. Regulators of the 27-nation European Union fined Apple 500 million euros in April for breaking competition rules by preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store. Last year, the EU fined the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for unfairly favoring its own music streaming service by forbidding rivals like Spotify from telling users how they could pay for cheaper subscriptions outside of iPhone apps. As of early Tuesday, the top app in Apple's App Store was TikTok, followed by Tinder, Duolingo, YouTube and Bumble. Open AI's ChatGPT was ranked 7th.
CNET
24 minutes ago
- CNET
Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Apple for Favoring ChatGPT Over Grok in App Store
Elon Musk has threatened Apple with legal action for what he perceives as overt favoritism towards OpenAI's ChatGPT app in its App Store rankings. In a series of posts on X, he claimed that Grok, the chatbot created by his own company xAI, was being unfairly penalized by the iPhone maker. "Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation," Musk said. "xAI will take immediate legal action." He went on to address Apple directly, asking "why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your 'Must Have' section when X is the number one news app in the world and Grok is number five among all apps." Grok is currently the number five free app in the US App Store, but Musk didn't supply any other evidence to support his accusations of antitrust violations. Apple and xAI didn't immediately respond to request for comment. The competition between AI chatbots has never been more intense, but ever since OpenAI first released ChatGPT to the public in November 2022, it has remained consistently popular with AI fans and does currently occupy the top spot in the App Store. Grok, meanwhile, arrived a year later, and is known for its informal, sometimes snarky tone, as well as its canny ability to produce spicy, controversial and problematic content. Apple does have an existing relationship with OpenAI, using its models as the basis for Apple Intelligence. Musk, too, has a history with OpenAI -- he was actually a founder of the company, which he later tried to sue. Following the news of the OpenAI and Apple Intelligence integration, Musk also threatened to ban the use of Apple devices at his companies. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman posted a link to a Platformer article on Monday -- in response to Musk's threats -- which claims that the X owner created a special system for prioritizing his own posts on the platform, regardless of whether you follow him. "This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn't like," Altman said.
